New car events are usually pretty cringe, full of pointless pyrotechnics, emotionless futurescapes, or hapless CEO antics. The latest exhibit in this ongoing series of’depressing visions of the future’.

The video was intended to reveal the ioniq 6, Hyundai’s latest electric vehicle with a 77.4kwh battery and 379 miles of range. Instead we got a smorgasbord of buzzwords -‘trashion,’ neoverse, nfts – ideally aimed at appealing to a youthful demographic, but going about it in the worst possible way.

In the video, we’re introduced to an artist named Mia who’s putting on a’trashion show’. For those not in the know, trashion is the art of repurposing waste and recyclable materials as fashion.

Mia uses her Hyundai ioniq 6 to traverse the eerily traffic-less landscape looking for bottle tops and tarps. The faceless Hyundai execs greenlit this production.

It seems likely, but goes unmentioned – does n’t allow her time to take breaks, forcing her to sleep in her car.

Hyundai says the ioniq 6 is the ideal place for a nap. The automaker says it was designed to be a’healing space’. The interior is packed with sustainable materials and dramatic lighting.

The vision of the future on display in this video is n’t the idealization of freedom Hyundai thinks it is. The video shows Uber drivers and other aggrieved gig economy workers forced to sleep in their cars to make a decent living.

Mia’s trashion show wo n’t be an IRL event, but rather in the metaverse. Her fashion ambitions do n’t seem to include the design and creation of actual, IRL clothes.

Gen zer does n’t have time to use her own bathroom to prepare – assuming she even has a bathroom to use.

Hyundai’s latest EV touches on the notion of what we choose to do with our time while being driven to our destination in electric and autonomous vehicles. It has sparked a little-noticed movement in the technology and auto industries to redefine cars as social environments on par with our homes and work places.

The concept of the’third place’ has been around for decades. Ray Oldenburg coined the concept in his 1989 book the great good place.

‘the beer joint in which the middle class American takes no pride can be as much a third place as the proud Viennese coffeehouse’.